One Last System

"What the hell was that?!" I screamed out, terrified by the sight of the torn bodies.

It wasn't the first time for me to see what a human looked like inside. It wouldn't even be the first time for me to check it out myself.

But to see three people whom I wanted to save torn to shreds by a monster that was supposed to attack me...

In essence, it wasn't the gruesome sight that startled me. It was the implications of what caused the monsters to kill one of their own for seemingly no reason.

"What the hell is wrong with them?!" Levi freaked out the same way I did. He even went as far as to stop in his tracks, freezing in place instead of keeping himself on a high alert.

And while the two, or with Mia included, the three of us were frozen in shock, the monsters continued to rush forth, all eager to bring the same fate to us that they brought upon their former allies.

"Don't ask me," I replied shortly, squinting my eyes while I continued to blast bolts of positive mana into the horde, shredding the structure of monster bodies and cutting away their source of power.

Yet, with how those monsters squeezed against each other, save for those on the edges of the horde, whenever I would cut away a piece of one monster, the piece would near instantly end up absorbed by the one to its side!

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'Maybe they do not recognize themselves as humans?' I attempted to guess the reason why the monsters would turn on the host of their fallen fellows. 'Maybe they perceive it as their allies suddenly turning into potential enemies?'

This theory made sense. After all, the monsters had some degree of intelligence. And in a fight like this, if I were to be put in their place and see how my allies suddenly contract zombie virus turning into a threat both to me and to my other allies...

'I guess I wouldn't hesitate to cut them down,' I thought, easily capable of imagining the such scenario.

Killing others like that without certain proof that they could be a danger was surely excessive. But in the middle of the fight, one couldn't hesitate or lack decisiveness.

"Listen up!" I called out, hatching up a new plan with nothing more but my own guess on its basis. "Here's what we are going to do!" I shouted, trying to push my voice through the noise made by all the monsters screeching, crying, and calling.

"Levi, I need you to split them up, bring two or three to the sides every once in a while!" I shouted out my order while detaching two entire wardens to deal with the threat that would soon come from the flanks. "I will try to help but it's up to you to cut them down to size!"

Levi threw me a quick look only to then nod his head and start repositioning himself.

Yet, with the monsters right in front of us, it wasn't an easy task. He couldn't simply walk to the side and then get to fulfiling my plan. Instead, he had to fight for every inch of space he wanted to travel through, cutting limbs, claws, spikes, and all sorts of other types of limbs that the monsters would create all for the sake of bringing him down.

"Interesting," Levi called out with an excited look on his face.

He didn't seem to be overwhelmed or even annoyed by the monster's insistent efforts to bring him down. But what was even more important...

He didn't appear to struggle to defend himself at all.

"It's been a while since I had such a dedicated opponent!" he shouted out with joy while immersing himself in the joy of the fight.

'Judging how he killed that royal in a mere instant...' I thought, recalling the scene from the recent past. Then, my lips curved up and formed a small, helpless smile.

'I guess that's how you think when you are as powerful as he is,' I thought. Then, I cast a quick glance at the situation in front of me at my sides, ensuring that I had enough leeway to turn my head to Mia.

"Dear, I need you to go to the side, where Levi will cut them down!" I shouted while trying to hold back the terror of putting Mia anywhere near danger.

I knew this terror was nothing more but an irrational reaction to everything the two of us went through in this world. She wasn't that weak to fall prey to monsters after the treatment both my two wardens and then Levi would put them through.

And yet, even if there was virtually no danger to her, I couldn't help but feel worried. Yet, for how worried I was, it didn't matter.

Because I not only didn't want to but ultimately had no right to shelter Mia away from the dangers of this world.

'Doing so would mean going against her wish of being of use to me,' I thought, gritting my teeth as I took a deep breath to shout the rest of my plan.

​ "I need you to pull them out of the remaining antimana and then drag them away to safety!" I called out, turning my eyes back to the monsters to ward off a suddenly bigger number of attacks trying to break my barrier.

'For how intelligent they are supposed to be, they sure don't learn from the mistakes of their fellow monsters as quickly as I was worried they would,' I thought when another group of five monsters fell pretty to the stray strand of pure mana poisoning their bodies and turning their own power against them.

"On it!" Mia shouted back, her voice turning out to be as happy as it could get.

'Just like I thought.' I released a small, defeated sigh.

I wanted to protect Mia with all my might. But Mia herself didn't want this kind of thing. And by putting myself in her shoes, I could easily see where she was coming from.

'If she were to be the stronger one, I wouldn't want to be a burden to her either.'

I shook my head and forced myself to focus back on the task at hand.

The number of the anti-mana monsters was decreasing... but their number right at the frontline continued to grow. And the worrying part was that as their number near us grew, they started to look for different ways to approach us.

Soon, Levi's job of pulling them aside turned meaningless as the monsters themselves started to spill to the sides of the frontline.

In a sense, it was a good thing, allowing Levi to focus on cutting them to size. But on the other hand...

'At this rate, they will flank us to the right,' I thought, pulling back one of the wardens that were boling away to help Levi from his side and reorienting it to the other side to stop the spilling monsters from moving to my back.

"There are more of them than I expected," Levi called out nearly as soon as I pulled out one of the two wardens that were helping him.

"Tired already?" I called back, lowering my hand to the pouch where I kept all the remaining pebbles with formations that has yet to be tested.

If the push were to come to a shove, I would hardly have any other choice but to risk it and start using them.

"Bitch, please," Levi laughed out loud... Only for his aura to suddenly explode, throwing a bunch of monsters away. "It's time for you to sit back and watch what your master is really capable of!"